CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

M DCCC LVIII.

JANUARY-DECEMBER.

"IF GOD REVEAL ANY THING TO YOU BY ANY OTHER INSTRUMENT OF HIS, BE AS READY TO
RECEIVE IT AS EVER YOU WERE TO RECEIVE ANY TRUTH BY MY MINISTRY; FOR I AM VERILY
PERSUADED-I AM VERY CONFIDENT THE LORD HATH MORE TRUTH YET TO BREAK FORTH OUT
OF HIS HOLY WORD. POR MY PART I CANNOT SUFFICIENTLY BEWAIL THE CONDITION OF THE
REFORMED CHURCHES, WHO ARE COME TO A PERIOD IN RELIGION, AND WILL GO AT PRESENT
NO FURTHER THAN THE INSTRUMENTS OF THEIR FIRST REFORMATION. THE LUTHERANS CANNOT
BE DRAWN TO GO BEYOND WHAT LUTHER SAW; WHATEVER PART OF HIS WILL OUR GOOD GOD
HAS IMPARTED AND REVEALED UNTO CALVIN, THEY WILL RATHER DIE THAN EMBRACE IT. AND
THE CALVINISTS YOU SEE STICK FAST WHERE THEY WERE LEFT BY THAT GREAT MAN OF GOD;
WHO YET SAW NOT ALL THINGS! THIS IS A MISERY MUCH TO BE LAMENTED."-Robinson's
Advice to the Pilgrim Fathers.

VOL. VIII.

LONDON:

HOULSTON & WRIGHT, 65, PATERNOSTER ROW.

EDINBURGH: ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK.

LONDON:

COCKSHAW, YATES, AND ALEXANDER, PRINTERS, LUDGATE-HILL.

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.

THE MONTHLY

CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

JANUARY, 1858.

George Carrington; or, cèlhere shall he go to?

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER I.

It was the afternoon before Christmas-day, in a year which must not be more nearly designated than by saying it was in the present century, and among the forties or fifties. The curtains were drawn ; there was a cheerful fire burning in the grate, and burning so briskly, and with so blue a flame, as to indicate the clear frosty weather which, 'when we were boys,' we always looked for at Christmas. The evening lamp, however, remained unlit, and so the room was in that delicious parlour-twilight, or domestic gloaming, so favourable to peaceful and tender musings, and home-feelings of every kind, while a sense of vagueness and mystery steals over one as the shadows flickering on the walls seem to intimate the nearness of the spiritworld.

6

Mr. Spencer was sitting in a low easy chair, almost afraid to move, lest he should waken his youngest child, who, after romping with him, as a four-year old darling may, and taking liberties with Papa' which men in the outside world would have looked at with amazement, was now fast asleep in the deepest rosiest sleep imaginable, little dreaming of the eyes that were fixed on her, much less of the paternal feelings which, all alive in that evening hour, were vainly trying to picture the possible future of the dear one that lay in his arms. Spencer sat watching her husband and child, and, as a mother lives in a world or sanctuary of her own, into only the forecourt of which it would be possible for even the tenderest of husbands to enter, she, too, had thoughts which cannot be put into words. From her youngest

Mrs.